A jargon-free journey through the world of social media.

January 11, 2013

Most people seem to think that great online content is
generated by two kinds of people: creators and curators.

Creators are the artists, entrepreneurs, humorists,
essayists, musicians and podcasters who live to make new things. Curators use their time and talents to sift
through all these creations to find the pieces truly worth sharing amid the Web’s
mountains of mediocrity.

These two roles account for the vast majority of popular Web
fodder, but there’s a third form of creativity that’s
often overlooked when it comes to making great digital content: discovery.

The idea that “everything is on the
Internet” is a myth, and a widespread one at that. Every day,
cultural archaeologists are uncovering amazing finds from the “real”
world and digitizing them for future generations. This week, I even got to
enjoy the feeling of being one of those people.

In December, I ran across the photo at the top of this post when it was shared
by a friend on Facebook. The photo had a strong emotional impact on me, and, surprised I had never seen it, I immediately wanted to know
the details.

When I went to Google, I found something truly odd on Google: almost nothing. The
photo had been shared many times, but no one seemed to know the story behind
the shot, other than the name of the photographer and the newspaper where it
was originally published.

When I get an itch to find something, I can’t
stop until I’ve found it. I emailed the
newspaper’s editors, who were very helpful but admitted they
couldn’t remember when the photo was taken or where it might be
found in their microfilm archives.

I kept digging in my (limited) spare time over the coming
weeks and, thanks to a blessed research librarian and several other generous
souls, I tracked down all the details and even the photographer himself.

If you’re interested, you can read the
whole story over at Poynter.org, where my writeup was posted earlier this week.
The reactions have been fantastic, and I have to admit it’s
been one of the more rewarding personal projects I’ve
tackled in a while.

But why is it rewarding? I didn’t
create the photo, and I’m not the first to share it
online. However, the story behind it was something that hadn’t
been told. There’s a singular joy in realizing
that you’ve actually added to the digital sum of human knowledge.

The lesson I’m trying to share isn’t
that you need to go take on obsessive reporting projects. It’s
more important that you simply think of discovery as a key part of your
approach to digital content and social media.

We can’t all create the next great or
hilarious thing, and few of us have the time to be curators of the global
information fire hose. But any of us can shut down the browser, get out in the
world and explore. Sometimes the things most worth finding can’t
be Googled. Yet.

October 30, 2012

LinkedIn has always been a bit of an outlier in the social
networking world, which is often to its advantage. But oddly enough, the site
that bills itself as the professional’s social media hub lacks
one basic component of professionalism: discretion.

Specifically, I’m talking about the
ability to see who has viewed your profile, a feature that is now being
automatically pushed to your inbox in the form of occasional email alerts.

This has always been an odd feature, one you won’t
find on almost any other reputable network. For years, I assumed the
increasingly vocal push for online privacy would motivate LinkedIn to drop the
feature, but instead the site has increased the visibility of your profile
viewers, making it harder to avoid seeing (and obsessing over) who has browsed your info.

To be clear, yes, you can disable this feature — somewhat.
In your profile settings, you can choose to “Select what
others see when you've viewed their profile.”
There are three options, one of which is complete anonymity. Certain privacy
settings also prevent you from seeing recent viewers if you are not publicly
viewable yourself.

However, I have not found a setting to turn off the email
notifications you receive about people viewing your profile. LinkedIn offers
many email subscription options, but none is specific to updates about your
profile views.

You may be wondering why I wouldn’t
want to know who has viewed my profile. It’s interesting info, and
it’s their fault for not setting their privacy better,
right?

I realize I’m likely in a tiny
minority of users who don’t like this feature. Our chief
strategist told me today it’s his favorite LinkedIn feature,
one that motivates him to log in almost daily.

I admit it can be fun to play the guessing game of who was
checking out your profile, but I still don’t like it. Here are my
beefs with this feature and why I think it should be dropped from LinkedIn:

1. It’s a waste of time that plays
solely to our curiosity.

You don’t gain some sort of insight into
the social strategic landscape of corporate America by seeing who viewed your
profile. It’s simply not information you can put to good use.

At best, you’ve learned about a
potential customer, client or employer. But if they don’t
take the extra effort to reach out to you, guess what? They don’t
want to.

Obviously you’ll be tempted to contact
the person or their company, but you shouldn’t. Responding to a
profile view on LinkedIn is creepy, awkward and unprofessional.

Instead, you’ll spend minutes, hours —
maybe even days — thinking about why certain people were looking at your
profile. You’d be better off simply not
knowing it had ever happened.

2. It creates false expectations.

“Hey man, any idea why one of your
coworkers was looking at my profile?” I’ve
gotten that question several times over the years, and my response is always
the same: “No.”

When LinkedIn shows you your recent profile viewers, it
creates an often false expectation that this person is interested in learning
more about you. Hey, maybe they are, but to my point earlier, it’s
best to wait until they act on it.

Was the HR manager from a major company looking at your
profile as a prelude to a job offer? Maybe. But he or she might also have been
browsing job titles and descriptions to help flesh out the posting for a job
similar to yours. Heck, they could have clicked on the wrong person.

In this case, the only possible value to seeing this kind of
viewer is if it inspires you to keep your job information and successes up to
date. And LinkedIn has plenty of other ways to remind you about that.

3. As a lucrative centerpiece of LinkedIn, it could inspire similar features.

Listen, I want LinkedIn to be profitable, but is this really
the route to take? “Who’s Viewed My Profile”
is now the No. 1 feature on LinkedIn’s upgrade chart, meaning
the site obviously knows users are willing to pay to see more about the people
seeing them.

I worry that the success of this feature will guide LinkedIn’s
future development, making it more about rubbernecking than networking. Even
worse, it lends believability to all those “see who viewed your
Facebook profile” scams — and could eventually
even convince Facebook to create the feature for real. (Facebook has firmly promised
this will not happen, but never say never when stock prices are on the line.)

So what’s your take? Are you obsessed or
annoyed with seeing who has viewed your LinkedIn profile? If you’re
a fan, what do you like most about it? Let us know in the comments.

October 05, 2012

The recent iOS6 update for iPhones has sparked its fair share of consternation from users, but most of the discussion has been about the new Apple Maps as an underwhelming replacement for Google Maps.

Personally, I've been far more annoyed with how the Facebook app has "integrated" into my daily tasks, like sending emails to coworkers or checking my calendar. Emails to longtime colleagues suddenly default to Facebook.com email addresses, and tons of random, unsolicited Facebook events are popping up in my phone calendar, making it hard to find the "real" meetings I'm supposed to be in.

If you've faced similar frustrations, I wanted to share a few quick steps to fixing the problem. These likely seem obvious to some of you, but hey, if it helps a few of you avoid the annoyance, I've done my part.

Step 1: Upgrading and syncing

If you've already upgraded your device to iOS6, you likely noticed that the process triggered a prompt asking if you wanted Facebook to have access to some of your built-in apps, like Contacts and Calendar. It's an all-or-nothing consent, but as I'll explain below, you can opt out of certain portions after accepting the change.

To be clear, the Facebook integration is a nice feature overall. I like being able to share photos directly from my photo gallery without having to pull up the Facebook app, for example. But that's not to say every aspect is worth having.

Step 2: Consider evicting Facebook from your Contacts

For me, the biggest annoyance with the marriage of Facebook into my iPhone has been the way my longtime contacts are now listed by their "Facebook email address." Recently, Facebook replaced your preferred email address with a facebook.com account, and few users bothered to change it back.

That means that when I try to email a colleague or friend, my iPhone suddenly defaults to Facebook.com addresses rather than their work or personal account. I don't mind having their Facebook.com emails on hand, but I'll likely never use it as a first pick for contacting someone.

I continued to have a few lingering issues with recipient emails defaulting to Facebook.com addresses, but this is easily remedied on a case-by-case basis by selecting the blue arrow to the right of a contact's email address (when it pops up as the default) and clicking "Remove From Recents."

Step 3: Want to cut Facebook events from your Calendar?

I'm not big on Facebook events. I attend, at best, one each month or two. So having Facebook events dumped into my iPhone Calendar (especially events I haven't RSVP'd to), was an annoyance.

To be fair, I've never liked the iPhone's daily Calendar interface, which gives you only the tiniest window in which to scroll through the day's upcoming meetings. But having Facebook events cluttered in there just made it worse.

Luckily, it's just as easy to remove them by deselecting "Calendar" in the Settings > Facebook tab of your iPhone.

Step 4: Don't let your friends (and Siri) prank you

One more subtle issue to be aware of is that iPhones with the voice-activated Siri interface — the 4S and 5, specifically — have a default setting that allows you to use Siri while your phone is locked. With the new Facebook integration, that means friends can pick up your locked phone and post to Facebook for you. That could get ugly, so I'd strongly recommend going into Settings > General > Passcode Lock and deselecting Siri as an app that can be accessed while the phone is locked.

Hopefully this helps a few of you unclutter your newly upgraded phone. What about you?
Do you have any tips on ways to make the daily experience of iOS6 a bit
smoother or more efficient? We'd love to hear them in the comments.

September 12, 2012

I don't need Facebook to tell me that my longtime friend Jenny, shown above, is gorgeous and fascinating. But apparently it doesn't hurt.

A new study from the University of Missouri has found that positive comments posted on your Facebook profile photo can act as "social cues" that make you seem more attractive "physically, socially, and professionally" to those viewing the photo.

Here's how the university summarized the findings:

Facebook users whose profile photos include social cues, additional information about the user, and many positive comments on their profile photos are viewed much more socially and physically attractive than users who have fewer social cues and negative comments on their profile photos.

In other words, people think you're hotter when they see other people calling you hot. But it also helps if the photo shows you doing something that's specific to your personality and passions.

This study sparked a lot of debate today in the halls of Luckie, where we wondered what exactly these findings say about us. Are our opinions so easily persuaded that we can't even decide how we feel about someone's appearance unless someone tells us how to feel?

Personally, I take a more optimistic approach. I think this shows that we judge people not just on their looks, but also on their character. When you see positive comments from friends on someone's photo, it shows that their friends truly care about them. Yes, it's an endorsement, but it's the best kind of endorsement, the kind that's made from the heart with no expectation of anything in return.

Here's more information from the University of Missouri on how the study was performed and what it means for Facebook users who want to give a strong first impression online:

August 16, 2012

How secure is your business's Facebook page? No, I don’t mean secure from password hackers or spammers. I mean how secure is the future of your page from staff fluctuations and the inevitable revolving door of administrators?

Case in point: This week, we’ve been helping one of our clients salvage a Facebook page that essentially seemed to vanish into thin air. It’s one of several they manage nationwide, and while the exact details are still unclear, it appears to have disappeared shortly after the exit of an employee who was its only administrator.

I can’t tell you much more, but I can tell you this: You don’t want to lose access to your Facebook page. It’s not like being locked out of your house. It's like coming home to find your house has been relocated to the bottom of the ocean.

In this case, Facebook has proven quite helpful, but the experience has gotten us thinking about some safeguards that businesses can put in place to help ensure a smooth transition through almost any internal shifts and shenanigans:

June 13, 2012

One of the two best decisions I ever made was going into newspaper journalism. The other was leaving it.

Being trained as a reporter and editor taught me invaluable professional skills, including the ability to look at any situation objectively and analytically. I also ended up marrying the incredibly smart police reporter who sat next to me, which was quite a bonus.

But when I lost my job as a newspaper city editor in 2005, I found myself at a difficult crossroad — one that eventually led me here, to a new career that proved even more exciting and rewarding.

This week, hundreds of other seasoned journalists in Alabama found themselves in the painful situation of being without a job. Advance Publications, owner of three major Alabama daily newspapers and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, cut an estimated 600 jobs, 400 of them in Alabama. Some may be re-hired as the papers restructure to focus on digital, but many will find themselves without work and without a lot of clear options.

I’m not the only ex-journalist here at Luckie, so our team decided to do what we could to help. We’ve launched a project called #ALNewsJobs, a grassroots effort to find and share good job openings for all those affected by this week’s layoffs.

You can help by following @ALNewsJobs on Twitter and Liking ALNewsJobs on Facebook. Of course, you can help even more by sharing great job openings that could be a good fit for the diverse array of talented writers, editors, designers, photographers and others now available for hire.

This project has already gotten great support within the community, and we hope to see that grow. Helping one person find a job is a monumental task these days. Helping 400 people is all the more daunting.

But it can be done. Not by one small group alone, but by a community that earnestly cares about neighbors, colleagues and friends. A community that’s willing to repay those who’ve kept us informed and connected, with few perks beyond the pride of a byline.

This is a painful moment for Alabama. But this state is home to the best storytellers in the nation, and that’s not going to change. What is going to change is the woefully narrow perception many companies have of journalists and their value.

Hiring a journalist isn’t an act of charity. It’s an investment that will pay off for your organization with greater productivity, innovative problem-solving and outstanding professional ethics.

Before I answer, let me first propose that we’re asking the wrong question. It’s not about “Should I stop advertising on Facebook?” The real question is, “Should I be advertising on Facebook in the first place?”

Here at Luckie & Company, we’ve generated literally billions of ad impressions for clients on Facebook, typically at a miniscule cost compared to other media options. And what we’ve consistently seen is that Facebook ads are incredibly effective — with a few caveats. Namely, your brand has to be committed to both Facebook and creative flexibility.

General Motors is citing poor sales-related ad performance as the reason to pull its money from Facebook, and I’m sure that’s true. But those of us who deal with Facebook ad campaigns every day quickly found ourselves wondering if GM was really trying hard enough.

By audience size alone, it’s clear that General Motors has struggled to keep up with its peers, especially at the global level. Let’s look at some numbers for comparison

Automakers | Facebook Likes

BMW: 9,914,313

Hyundai Worldwide: 2,430,572

Honda: 2,057,104

Kia Worldwide: 1,925,231

Ford: 1,502,385

Volkswagen USA: 1,169,401

Toyota USA: 935,990

Volvo: 415,784

General Motors: 378,491

Chrysler: 298,765

Fiat: 289,134

Renault: 239,127

Auto Sub-Brands | Facebook Likes

Mercedes-Benz (Daimler): 7,319,676

Audi USA (Volkswagen): 5,215,038

Mini (BMW): 2,969,017

Chevrolet (GM): 1,215,242

Cadillac (GM): 1,167,853

GMC (GM): 660,359

Land Rover (Tata): 386,392

Buick (GM): 411,908

Smart (Daimler): 283,079

Acura (Honda): 173,020

What these comparisons show us is that GM has been a respectable player in the Facebook marketing space, but clearly not a leader. The automaker admitted as much when it fired its social media ad agency in December (read more here), after which the agency complained that GM never understood the value of social media as place to build brand instead of just racking up sales.

So let’s get back to the real question: Should YOU pull your ads from Facebook? Or maybe kill that big campaign you had in the works?

Probably not.

Facebook ads remain tremendously effective (compared to the alternatives) at driving awareness and audience growth within Facebook. True, Facebook is saturating a bit, making it tougher for brands in lots of ways. More businesses are competing for limited ad space, and consumers are becoming jaded by the tedious and unexciting ads they see stripped down the side of each page.

Looking at the numbers

I had our agency's Facebook ad guru, Keith Browder, crunch some comparison numbers to see if Facebook is really losing its punch as an ad forum. Here’s what he found:

Comparing a Facebook campaign we’re running now to a similar one we ran this time last year, we’ve seen the click-through rate (CTR) rise from .04% in 2011 to .07% in 2012. Those numbers might sound low, but with the staggering number of ad impressions Facebook generates, it’s really not bad at all.

And while this case study sounds like good news for Facebook, it probably says more about our agency's ability to tweak creative and improve our targeting to yield better results.

Things are a bit less rosy on two other fronts: cost per Like and cost per thousand impressions (CPM). There, we saw the cost of new Likes rise from $1.30 each in 2011 to a number that hovers between $1.48 (for Sponsored Stories) and $2.75 for display ad units.

The nice thing about Facebook is that we can, at any time, adjust the current campaign to bring our costs down and increase our effectiveness. That’s a time-consuming process that requires experience and expertise, but it’s the only way to ensure your Facebook campaigns are consistently effective.

Google has a myriad of ad options ranging from search and mobile to YouTube pre-rolls and Google+ Circle targeting. Facebook, on the other hand, has Facebook ads, which have notoriously (and intentionally) few bells and whistles. Facebook has never wanted to be seen as primarily an ad platform, though Wall Street investors are sure to disagree once the stock goes public.

So in summary, if Facebook is important to your business, by all means keep advertising on Facebook. But keep some of these tips in mind:

• Facebook ads can’t be your only growth strategy. Ensure that your business’ page is being promoted on your products, in stores, on traditional ads or anywhere else you can reach your audience. And sure, try some Google search ads and see how they perform as a driver to Facebook, not just your home page.

• Be flexible. If your Facebook ads aren’t working, try something else. Change your targeting. Change your creative. Kill the ads that aren’t working and enhance the ones that are. Are you wasting money on audience-growth ads that hit existing fans? Are your thumbnail images cluttered and confusing? Are your headlines saying anything worth acting on? Be hard on yourself and set aside the time to treat your campaigns with professional diligence and creativity.

• Keep people within Facebook. The best ad units offered by Facebook are those that generate Likes, not click-throughs. So focus on Sponsored Stories, Like ads and display ads that explain the benefits of becoming a fan. It’s worth experimenting with Facebook advertising as a driver to your website, but I doubt you’ll find it to be the best option. Instead, focus on building and engaging your audience, then producing content that fans the flames.

And remember, no ad medium is ineffective by nature. Dismissing an entire outlet, whether it’s Facebook or radio or rich media, is just a cop-out. Think about what you’re trying to accomplish, then find the right tools for the job. From this perspective, the recent ad flap may say more about General Motors than it does about Facebook.

May 10, 2012

The integration of Facebook Timeline brought a slew of new goodies that may not have come across your radar yet.

One of these tools is the ability to “Pin to Top” of the page or “Highlight” a post within a page, but the bigger question, more than just the simple mechanics of clicking a pencil or star, is how to decide which content deserves this gold standard of your fans' of attention.

When considering what to do with certain media or posts, it’s important to think about the original purpose for which the content was created as well as the audience that it was created for. You wouldn’t want a work safety video highlighted on your page, but an ad campaign that showcased a new product line would be a perfect fit. And you wouldn’t pin a policy or frequently asked questions to the top of your page every week; that content can be better placed on the About page.

Ask yourselves these questions before deciding to “Pin to Top” or “Highlight”:

May 09, 2012

“I am passionate about social media.” I’ve seen this line in dozens of cover letters, resumes and LinkedIn profiles that I’ve reviewed in recent weeks as we try to fill an opening for a social media planner.

But often, I find myself doubting that the candidates really mean it.

Why? Because when I take the time to read their blogs, their Twitter feeds and their Pinterest boards, I find musings on everything BUT social media. They talk about their opinions of movies, celebrities, politics, fashion, sports and music. They talk about what they’re buying, watching, hoping, eating, drinking and regretting.

But what they don’t write about is the industry they claim to be “passionate” about joining. And that leaves me with the impression that these candidates are looking for a paycheck, not a career.

April 16, 2012

Search behemoth Google continues to struggle in its quest to dominate the realm of social networking. But with fresh coat of paint and a couple of new bells and whistles, Google+ is now once again poised to rival Facebook.

As you can see in the video below, the new Google+ redesign is all about images. The sharing stream now features larger photos and video. There's also a sleek customizable ribbon on the left side of the page that allows for customization. You can now drag icons like "Circles" and "Photos" and arrange them as you like.

The new look also has been incorporated into Gmail and Google Reader in an effort to boost Google+ functionality.

The redesign is attractive but the jury is still out on whether these aesthetic changes can lure faithful Facebook fans. While Google+ boasts an impressive-on-paper 170 million users, there are still plenty of questions about mainstream adoption. Comscore data recently showed U.S. users spending 3.3 minutes on Google+ each month compared to 7.5 hours on Facebook.

Google's new visual upgrade for the network is definitely a step in the right direction, but what do you think? Will it be enough to finally start luring users to spend considerable amounts of time on Google+?

Edward Bowser is Community Manager at Luckie & Company. You can contact him by email or follow him on Twitter.